1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to a system and method for preventing smoke and fire damage and, more particularly, a system and method for preventing smoke and fire damage to people and equipment in a clean room area.
2. Description of the Related Art
In modern wafer fabrication and integrated circuit manufacturing facilities, many, often dozens, of work benches or tools are located in a single clean room area. A fire in a sink, wet bench or other piece of equipment not only results in damaged equipment and potential harm to workers, but also, in a sufficiently large facility, could cause hundreds of millions of dollars in damage due to lost production. More specifically, smoke contamination from a single damaged tool can spread throughout the entire clean room area potentially rendering the entire fabrication facility unusable from that point on.
With many tools in a single clean room area, it would be desirable to be able to isolate a single piece of equipment in the event of a fire. Furthermore, it would be desirable to provide a system and method for detecting such a fire and particularly the contaminants associated therewith and for effecting an automated environmental isolation of the area immediately surrounding the fire. Such a system and method would be adapted to thereafter extinguish the fire while preventing any contaminants from spreading throughout the clean room area.